The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Reporter's Diary

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Aug 29, 2006

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Reporter's Diary

Emotional attachment

WE OFTEN wonder why people bother so much to get rehabilitated in a different place to make way for big development projects. Whether they get adequately rehabilitated to their satisfaction is, of course, a different matter. What is relevant here is the emotional attachment human beings have to a geographical location. To be more specific, the question is why Bangaloreans hesitate to shift from say, R.T. Nagar to Kengeri. Several years in a house, however small or big, apparently cements a relationship with the location. The friends you make, the shops you frequent, the parks you visit, the associations and clubs you get attached to, all these combined make an impact on your life that it becomes extremely difficult to disengage and branch out. Of course, youngsters find it a little less difficult to shift. But old timers, much like the villager deeply attached to his land, stay on come what may. The ones who are forced by their younger ones to abandon the roots and start life afresh in a new locality find it hard to adjust. These elders often complain of going far away from their friends, too distant to even hear of untimely deaths. For them, the global village is a myth, just good for the conversations!

A surprise

WHEN A dignitary repeatedly arrives behind schedule at public programmes, it becomes news. Gradually, the late arrival of a dignitary itself "becomes the scheduled time". If the dignitary happens to arrive almost on time, then too it becomes news. There was a surprise for journalists on Monday when Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, who is known for arriving late at functions, arrived almost on time for the foundation stone laying ceremony for the Outer Ring Road-Bangalore-Mysore Road grade separator project. The programme was scheduled at 4.30 p.m. and Mr. Kumaraswamy arrived only a little late (he is known to have arrived at functions almost two hours late in the past). He could not deliver a speech because of the heavy downpour and left the venue immediately after the ceremony. Later, it was learnt that the Chief Minister's programmes earlier in the day had concluded on schedule and he did not have too many visitors to see for yet another delayed arrival.

Helpful

NOT ALL autorickshaw drivers are avaricious or interested only in making your wallets thinner. Some even go out of their way to help a tourist find her way to her destination. At the pre-paid autorickshaw counter on Mahatma Gandhi Road last week, an autorickshaw driver was asked to take a woman passenger, obviously a tourist, to Koramangala. Now, her destination was a little known guesthouse of a company with no street number or only vague directions. After the police personnel on duty could not help out, the autorickshaw driver borrowed the paper with the address from his passenger and started asking others around. Finally, he was given directions to follow and even told which company the guesthouse is likely to belong to. Both the passenger and autorickshaw driver took off with wide smiles. Like the autorickshaw drivers who hand over to the police or their owners the belongings left behind, such helpful ones also belong to a small and perhaps, "endangered species".

Rasheed Kappan,

Anil Kumar Sastry

and K. Satyamurty

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